This invention relates to a safety construction for passenger vehicles and more specifically to a vehicle design intended to protect the occupants of a vehicle upon collision with an external obstruction.
Various safety devices have been employed over the years to reduce injury to occupants when the vehicle in which they are riding is involved in a collision, be it with another vehicle traveling at a high rate of speed or a fixed external obstruction. These devices include shock absorbing bumpers, padded dashboards, collapsible steering columns, seat belts, and air bags.
Regrettably, these safety devices have been effective only to a limited degree and usually only if the collision takes place at relatively slow speeds and the sudden deceleration therefrom is minimal. However, if the vehicle is subjected to substantially instantaneous deceleration to zero velocity, the occupants are propelled forward at a velocity approximately equal to that which the vehicle was travelling prior to impact, these aforementioned safety devices have been effective only to a limited degree. It is well known that during a collision, the components adjacent the area of the vehicle struck absorb the kinetic energy of the vehicle, and the kinetic energy of the driver and passengers must be absorbed by other means to prevent their collision with the windshield, dashboard or other objects within the vehicle compartment. Air bags used in combination with seat belts have proved to be the most satisfactory devices so far for decelerating an occupant, however, air bags are only available to the front seat passengers, usually the driver, and not to the rear seat passengers.
The use of separable passenger compartments is not new. U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,929,637, 3,162,479, 3,695,629, 3,831,998 and 3,837,422 all disclose passenger compartments which move relative to the remainder of the vehicle upon collision with an external obstruction. However, the complexity of the various mechanisms used to secure the separable passenger compartment to the vehicle chassis during normal operation and control the movement of the compartment after impact would result in an unacceptable increase in the cost of the vehicle and decrease in the reliability of the mechanism which usually occurs as the number of movable parts increases.
The present invention is an improvement over the conventional devices set forth in the above-referenced U.S. patents by providing an improved separable passenger compartment and a means of effectively securing the compartment to the vehicle chassis during normal operation of the vehicle, yet which will absorb a great amount of the kinetic energy prior to its effect on the passengers and operation of the vehicle, yet which will permit a degree of movement of the compartment in proportion to the amount of force generated during a collision.
It is therefore the primary object of the present invention to provide an improved safety vehicle having a separable passenger compartment which is automatically displaced upon impact of the vehicle with an external obstruction.
It is another object of the present invention to provide an improved safety vehicle in which the separable passenger compartment is secured to the chassis by a novel, kinetic energy absorbing means.
It is still another object of the present invention to provide an improved safety vehicle which is simple in design, economical in production and reliable in operation.
Other objects and features of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description considered in connection with the accompanying drawings which disclose the embodiments of the invention. It is to be understood, however, that the drawings are designed for the purpose of illustration only and not as a definition of the limits of the invention.